JOHN KITIME MY LIFE 1

 

Introduction 

1962 we had a serious family crisis, we were evicted from the government house where we lived when my father was the Headmaster of Mshindo Middle School, the family moved to my paternal grandfather’s house. My grandfather soon  became my best friend, he allowed me to try out very wild idea that came to my mind, and encouraging me to do things which when I look back now, I cannot but admire the patience of that old man. Just imagine there was a day I told him I wanted to build an airplane and he just asked me what I would need, I requested a hammer, a few nails, and some corrugated roofing tin sheets, I think he was having a laugh of his life inside, but he went out and bought a hammer and some nails, there were a lot of used corrugated iron sheets lying around, and he gave them all to me. I started working on building my airplane, he would come and check now and then asking me how the building was going on, I hammered away and off course soon I realized I was getting nowhere and gave up, he never discouraged me,  that was my grandfather. And there was this day that I found a shining stone while playing and thought it was a piece of diamond. I rushed to tell my grandfather that we were now going to be extremely rich as I had found a piece of diamond, he looked at the stone and acted as if he was just as excited as I was, ina secretive voice he showed me a place to hide the precious stone, on a shelf behind his old books. A week later he came home with box full of shining stones and gently told me ‘We have made a mistake, the stone we found was not a piece of diamond it’s a piece of mica’. And so for a few minutes we shared the sadness of not turning into the richest people in our street.

It was a sad day when my grandfather died from poison. But we will get to that later.
This is the story of my life, I don't think I would want to live another life.

The begining:  

The Kitimes come from a village called Katenge in Mgama Ward. Mgama is a few kilometers off the Iringa - Mbeya highway about 47 kilometers from Iringa town. .
When I was a child I heard stories that the original Kitime came from south, it was never clear what was meant by ‘south’, some said that it meant south of the Uhehe territory, and some stories even claim it meant south of Africa, and that Kitime came from one of the South African tribes who  ran away from the powerful King Shaka of the Zulus. It was many years later that I got to learn a much clearer picture. The grave of the man who began this clan does not have the name Kitime on it. 

For some reason as a young man, adventurous Kimwagutangu ventured into the Uhehe territory with a friend and they were both captured by the Wahehe warriors, maybe he wasn’t killed because by then the Wahehe had a truce, famously known as Utani after the fight at Itombololo where the war ended up with no winners. A report on the capture was quickly sent to  Mutwa, who ordered that he be detained. While he was in detention he noticed that the Wahehe did not trim the grass that they thatched their huts with. He began passing time by trimming nearby huts, which began to look very neat. Wahehe call trimming Kutima, some say that’s where the name Kitime came from, Kitime can be translated as the hut that has been trimmed. It is written Siutanda Kimwagutangu.  Siutanda Kimwagutangu came into the Hehe Kingdom during the rule of Mutwa Mkwava. Siutanda was the grand child of one of the warriors who escaped from the rule of Shaka ka Senzangakhona famously known as Shaka Zulu.

When Shaka Zulu came to power, he brought with him a period of wars between 1818 and 1828, the terrors of war contributed to a many of his neighbours  going into forced migrations that was known as  Mfecane. Tribal leaders like Zwangendaba, Mzilikazi, and Shoshangane moved their people  northwards as  far as  East  Africa. One of the warriors from these war, who was lightskined  in complexion and was bald settled around Songea as did a number of his fellow warriors who were escaping Shaka. He was mostly known as mZulu. To date still some Kitime children are born light skinned and bald. Mzulu managed to start a family and one of his sons was called Gengedu Isaagamba. Gengedu had several children one of them was Kimwagutangu.

News of the grass trimming detainee reached Mutwa Mukwava, who invited this strange to his palace, and gave him the job of trimming the roofing of all his huts, and reroofing any other new hut. Mutwa took him into the Hehe tribe as was sometimes done at the time. His job was from then on roofing huts in Mutwas capital.